The story of the early years of gDiapers + gNappies (gDiapers.com, gNappies.com), the leader in eco-friendly hybrid diapers.

As I mentioned, previously, I am in the midst of a sleep experiment so I can get more out of my day.
No ice baths for me, rather I invested in a Sleeptracker. It is a watch, alarm and a device that tracks how many times in a night you are in a "nearly -awake" moment. "REM (rapid eye movement sleep" occurs when you are in the deepest of sleeps. These periods are the most regenerative.

There is a theory that there are more REM sleeps before midnight than after it. So for 3 weeks I have been going nye nye at 8.30 - 9pm (No more Gossip Girls and Dirty Sexy Money - bummer...) and setting my watch for 4am. So I am averaging 7 hours of sleep. I was doing 7 hours in 2007 but they were the wrong 7 as they started at 11 pm.

The Sleeptracker's alarm clock works by waking you up within 10, 20 or 30 minutes of your desired wake up time. It records your nearly awake moments and goes off at one of those times rather than while you are in deep REM.

And blow me down, it actually works. Last night I had nearly awake moments at the following times. There were four before midnight and 7 after midnight.

9.36 pm
9.54 pm
11.30 pm
12.07 pm

1.04 am
1.48 am
1.57 am
2.07 am
2.46 am
3.04 am
3.23 am

I set it to go off at 4am but it woke me at 3.38. I have never felt better. The average number of minutes between nearly awake moments has increased from 12 minutes to a new world record last night of 33 minutes.

Like anyone running a start up, energy management is a big piece of the challenge. Tim Ferriss, author of the book "The 4 hour work week" posts his top 5 things to do to sleep better. I am currently doing my own sleep experiment - results coming soon!

Relax Like A Pro: 5 Steps to Hacking Your Sleep

I once went almost five days without sleep in 1996 just to see 1) if I could make a week (I couldn’t), and 2) what the side-effects would be.

I was a new neuroscience major at Princeton at the time and hoped to do research with famed serotonin pioneer, Barry Jacobs.

Hallucinations cut my sleep deprivation trial short, but I’ve continued to experiment with sleep optimization and variation as a means of improving performance.

Here are a few effective techniques and hacks I’ve picked up over the last five years from sources ranging from biochemistry PhDs to biologists at Stanford University…

Morning fatigue and headache isn’t just from sleep debt or poor sleep. Low blood sugar following overnight fasting is often a contributing factor. Just prior to bed, have a small snack such as: a few sticks of celery with almond butter, a mandarin orange and 5-8 almonds, or plain low-fat (not fat-free) yoghurt and an apple. Ever wonder how you can sleep 8-10 hours and feel tired? This is part of the explanation. Make a pre-bed snack part of your nutritional program.

1-2 tablespoons of flaxseed oil (120-240 calories) can be used in combination with the above to further increase cell repair during sleep and thus decrease fatigue. It tastes like a mixture of cat urine and asparagus, so I recommend pinching your nose while consuming it — thanks Seth Roberts, PhD. for this tip — or using capsules.

2. Use ice baths to provoke sleep.

Japanese have longer lifespans that do most other ethnicities. One theory has been that regular ofuro or hot baths at bedtime increase melatonin release, which extends lifespan. Paradoxically, according to the Stanford professors who taught Bio 50, cold is actually a more effective signaller for sleep onset, but it could have no relation to melatonin production.

I decided to test the effect of combining 10-minute ice baths, timed with a countdown kitchen timer, one hour prior to bed (closer to bed and the adrenergic response of noradrenalin, etc. won’t allow you to sleep) with low-dose melatonin (1.5 - 3 mg) on regulating both sleep regularity and speed to sleep. The icebath is simple: 2-3 bags of ice from a convenience store ($3-6 USD) put into a half-full bath until the ice is about 80% melted. Beginners should start with immersing the lower body only and progress to spending the second five minutes with the upper torso submerged (fold your legs Indian-style at the end of the tub if you don’t have room). I’ll talk about the fat-loss and sperm-count benefits of this in future post.

The result: it’s like getting hit with an elephant tranquilizer. Don’t expect it to be pleasant at first.

3. Eating your meals at set times can be as important as sleeping on a schedule.

People talk a lot about circadian (circa dia = approximately one day) rhythms and establishing a regular sleep schedule, but bedtime timing is just one “zeitgeber” (lit: time giver), or stimulus that synchronizes this biorhythm (like pheromones and menstrual cycle). Eating meals at set times helps regulate melatonin, ghrelin, leptin, and other hormones that affect sleep cycles. Other “zeitgebers” for sleep include melatonin, light, and temperature. Parting suggestion: Get a sleep mask if you have any degree of light in your bedroom.

4. Embrace 20-minute caffeine naps and ultradian multiples.

Test “caffeine naps” between 1-3 pm. Down an espresso and set your alarm for no more than 20 minutes, which prevents awakening in the middle of a restorative sleep cycle. Interrupting cycles often leaves you feeling worse than no sleep (though some researchers assert your performance will still improve in comparison with deprivation).

For longer naps, test multiples of 90 minutes, which is called an “ultradian” rhythm in some papers, though the proper term should be “infradian” since it’s less than 24 hours. Thomas Edison, despite his vocal disdain for sleep and claim to sleep only four hours per night, is reported to have taken two three-hour naps daily.

Don’t forget to factor in your time-to-sleep. It often takes me up to an hour to fall asleep, so I’ll set my alarm for seven hours ((4 x 90 minutes) + 60-minute time-to-sleep).

5. Turn off preoccupation with afternoon closure and present-state training.

I have — as do most males in my family — what is called “onset insomnia.” I don’t have trouble staying asleep, but I have a difficult time falling asleep, sometime laying awake in bed for 1-2 hours. There are two approaches that I’ve used with good effect without medications to address this: 1) Determine and set a top priorities to-do list that afternoon for the following day to avoid late-night planning, 2) Do not read non-fiction prior to bed, which encourages projection into the future and preoccupation/planning. Read fiction that engages the imagination and demands present-state attention. Recommendations for compulsive non-fiction readers include Motherless Brooklyn and Stranger in a Strange Land.

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From fat-loss (leptin release decreases with sleep debt) to memory consolidation, sleep is the currency of high-performance living.

Have you taken time to master it like a skill?

Here are a few questions for the researchers among you:

-What is the fastest way to pay off sleep debt?
-Can you eat more food — or protein specfically — to compensate for sleep deprivation? To what degree?
-How do side-effects of ongoing melatonin use compare to drugs like Ambien?
-What is the interplay of the hypothalamus and RAS (reticular activating system)?
-Does insulin sensitivity change between waking and sleep cycles? How?
-Can coffee and its effects on adenosine affect sleep depth or length?